Every Deadly Sin

by D M Greenwood

  ‘No, I’ve seen no one. We only arrived yesterday, Saturday.’

  ‘Guy Tussock now. Some sort of relation to the founder?’

  Theodora hated all this beating about the bush. Why couldn’t the woman ask straightforward questions of people who might be able to answer them instead of trying to lead one on?

  ‘Not the founder. But certainly of one of the moving spirits.’

  Inspector Bottomley realised she wasn’t getting anywhere. She leaned forward and switched tack. ‘What are places like this for, Miss Braithwaite?’

  ‘They are here for the refreshment of the soul through the practice of prayer, reflection and physical work. They provide a context for people to become aware of the presence of God.’

  ‘Not for settling old scores then?’

  Theodora wasn’t sure she’d heard the Inspector aright. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘What about the pool, the well?’ The Inspector pressed on, whether on the same tack or another, she did not indicate. ‘What’s special about it?’

  ‘I suspect its attraction comes not so much from its pious legend as from some deeper urge in us. Water is such a hopeful medium, don’t you think? It seems as if it can make us quite different people, change us, make us better.’

  ‘Reckon we could all do with a bit of that. Whose is it? Who started it off?’

  ‘A Christian Roman soldier, Sylvanus, in the fifth century, made it famous by his noble death. Then a man called Bellaire resuscitated it as a pilgrimage centre just before the war and kept it going until another cleric, Canon Tussock, took it over in the sixties. He used the place rather differently.’

  ‘How differently?’

  ‘I think Bellaire believed in the pool, in its powers to focus the energies, almost to heal. I don’t mean physical cures, more purging, integrating – all the things that religion’s about. Tussock, on the other hand, just liked to get people together, perhaps to get them to like each other, a sort of microcosm of the Christian life.’

  ‘Why should anyone want to live the Christian life?’ asked Inspector Bottomley on the point of retirement.

  ‘You deal with a lot of violence in the force, don’t you? People at odds with themselves and so with each other. Nothing else can make an end of the violence.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Just what you see here or rather just what I said. Use the traditional practices of religion, prayer, worship, reflection on Scripture, the support of the believing community, making an effort to change one’s own nature which we call pilgrimage, the effort and example of Christ Himself.’

  ‘I thought it was a matter of beliefs, what people think and they’re pretty incredible, you’ve got to admit.’

  ‘No,’ said Theodora. ‘No, not at all. It’s not a matter of beliefs, not firstly. Firstly, it’s a matter of doing certain things. People are religious if and when they do different things from unreligious people. Beliefs divide, practices unite. Both Bellaire and Tussock knew this in their different ways. Hence this centre. That’s what places like this are for.’

  ‘Has it ever been successful?’ Inspector Bottomley asked dismissively. There wasn’t a single category which she could make sense of in Theodora’s explanation. Her own fault, she reflected, she’d asked the question.

  ‘We’ve hardly begun to try,’ said Theodora.

  It was all very unsatisfactory. Inspector Bottomley looked through her notes. According to the preliminary report, Ruth Swallow had died at about five o’clock in the afternoon as a result of a blow to the back of her head. The wound had probably been caused by a stone being hurled with great force. She had been standing on the edge of the well looking down into it. The impact of the stone had knocked her into the water and rendered her unconscious. There was water in the lungs which suggested that she had been breathing when she entered the pool. Soon after five Guy Tussock, on his way back to his tent after a ride on his mountain bike, had found the body, pulled it out and given the alarm.

  ‘Well Luff, lad, what do you think, eh?’ Inspector Bottomley was not above exaggerating, even parodying her accent if she thought it served a purpose.

  Luff looked through his own notes. He didn’t reckon this woman Inspector, new to him and new to the division. He particularly hadn’t liked that excursion into religion with that woman deacon or whatever she was. Religion left him uneasy. All right for women but the rest of us have work to do. But Inspector Bottomley was known to be a canny lass. He might learn a trick worth two if he kept sharp. He intended to make the plainclothes lot if it killed him. He shuffled his papers. ‘I take it we can write the Bishop’s party off, Peake, Bottle, Broad, Gosh. Pity really. That Bishop’s a right superior beggar. If that’s religion, you can stuff it.’

  ‘Can’t write it all off like that. There are some very nasty senior coppers. Doesn’t mean there’s no point in police work in general. While they have the sterling worth of the likes of you and me, Sergeant.’

  ‘I thought it was supposed to be different with religion. That woman …’ He searched his list.

  ‘Broad?’

  ‘No, the other one, Braithwaite. She was saying the same as me, if I followed her. She said it’s what you do that matters. You can see what that Bishop does. He’s a liar and a boaster and a bully.’

  ‘Doesn’t make him a murderer, Sergeant.’

  ‘Does after a fashion.’

  ‘Quite a little philosopher. I didn’t know you felt so strongly.’

  ‘Had one of them as my first sergeant when I joined the force. I’ll never forgive him. D’you think he does know the Chief Constable?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter, does it? Chief Constables like crimes solved, showing on their statistics. Chaps in purple vests won’t do that for him. However, doesn’t get us any forrader in the case of Miss R. S.’

  ‘What about the Bishop’s suggestion of travellers?’ Luff knew where he was with travellers.

  ‘There could have been a van through. I saw a bit of oil on the road as I came up. Bootle was saying they gather here about now for St Sylvan’s day, end of this week apparently. Doesn’t make them killers, living in a van.’

  ‘Untidy. Leave a lot of dirty litter, gypsies.’

  ‘What would be the motive though?’

  ‘Could be a nutter?’

  ‘Plenty of those about. Still, you’re right, of course. We ought to have a word. See if you can pick ’em up. A van with a dragon on the back, your favourite Bishop said. Shouldn’t be too difficult to spot. How about scene of crime?’

  Luff felt he was getting on well. The woman wasn’t that bad after all. She’d taken his suggestion seriously. ‘Nowt. Tyre marks all over the place from that Canon’s wheelchair. Yesterday, today. Who knows? And that lad’s mountain bike the same.’

  ‘What about this here Canon? Canon Beagle?’

  ‘He’s not got much of an alibi.’ Luff peered through his spectacles. ‘“At the time in which you are interested I would judge I was somewhere near the south door of the chapel”, is what he said. In fact, he hasn’t got anyone who can corroborate that.’

  ‘Anything strike you about the Canon, Sergeant?’

  Luff reflected. ‘Powerful bloke,’ he said after a minute.

  Inspector Bottomley nodded. ‘According to their book of words,’ Inspector Bottomley tapped her copy of Crockford’s, ‘he had a halfblue for the decathlon in 1934.’

  Luff didn’t know which impressed him more, her having done her research in some book he’d never heard of or the fact that his own father hadn’t been born in 1934. ‘It’s a hell of a long time ago,’ was all that he could manage.

  ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, Sergeant, but one of the events in which you have to excel in order to compete in a decathlon is putting the shot, yes?’

  ‘Right,’ said Luff. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Good practice for hurling rocks accurately sixty years later, would you say?’

  Luff couldn’t
make out if she was laughing at him or not. ‘He’s got a hell of a pair of shoulders on him still,’ he said safely.

  ‘Motive?’

  ‘Nay.’ Luff shook his head.

  ‘Enough of the Canon. But we’ll keep him on the list just the same. How about the women, Mrs Lemming?’

  ‘She said she was at the pool until four then went in search of the Reverend Braithwaite but didn’t look in the chapel.’

  ‘So neither she nor Miss Braithwaite have anyone to corroborate them. Still, I don’t see Mrs L. having the physical strength.’

  ‘She’s venom enough to though,’ Luff said with admiration. ‘And the Braithwaite woman’s athletic enough to nip up to the pool, hurl the rock and get back to the chapel sharpish, given she went there at all.’

  ‘Do you see her killing Ruth Swallow?’ asked Inspector Bottomley.

  ‘Lot of strength there,’ Luff admitted. ‘But sort of a different kind.’

  ‘Moral, perhaps,’ said the Inspector ruminatively, ‘or possibly,’ a new thought struck her, ‘spiritual?’

  ‘Could be right.’ Luff wasn’t too eager to stray down unfamiliar paths. ‘What about the other woman, Mrs Clutton Brock?’

  ‘Hers and her husband’s account support each other for what it’s worth. Practising their cello until twenty past five. He says,’ Inspector Bottomley flicked through her notes, ‘at a quarter to five he looked out of the window and saw Bough walking away from the house.’

  ‘Did Mrs C. B. see that?’

  ‘Not according to my notes,’ said the Inspector. ‘On the other hand, why should he say he had if he hadn’t?’

  ‘Might be giving someone an alibi?’ Luff was puzzled.

  ‘How long does it take for someone to get from here to the pool?’

  Luff was extremely proud of himself. ‘I ran it as fast as I could. It takes eleven minutes. It’s the bit at the end when you have to get round the trees and rocks. They act as a sort of barrier really between the pool and the rest of the grounds.’

  ‘So Both Guy and Bough might still have made it. I mean we can’t time the death to anything like five minutes.’

  ‘Well, we know she was dead by five past because Guy says he pulled her out at that time, dead.’

  ‘I wish to God we’d got Guy’s statement,’ said Inspector Bottomley, arranging her notes in alphabetical order. ‘Where was he before he went to the pool?’

  ‘He had his tent pitched above the pool. He might have been going back there.’

  ‘He’ll not get so far. Not even on that bike of his. I’ve got a call out to all divisions.’

  ‘Let’s assume for the moment that it’s intrinsically unlikely that the same man should both discover and bring to the attention of the police a murder, and perpetrate it himself.’ Inspector Bottomley was didactic.

  ‘Well,’ said Luff, ‘there was that case in Farsley couple of years back.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know,’ Inspector Bottomley was not going to be cheated of her hypothesis. ‘Nevertheless,’ she went on heavily, ‘let’s just suppose for a minute that everyone’s telling the truth. They’re religious people after all. Where does that leave us?’

  ‘Tom Bough.’

  ‘He’d have a motive, I suppose.’ Inspector Bottomley was reluctant. ‘That stuff about Ruth having his child which Mrs Lemming went on about. Still, there are quicker ways of terminating an unwanted pregnancy than killing the mother.’

  ‘Perhaps’, Luff waved his hand in the direction of the crucifix, ‘she wanted to keep the kid. Maybe she was religious.’ Luff thumbed through to find his notes. ‘He says here he left Ruth washing up after lunch and went down to his shed to mend the clutch on the minibus. He came out about half-past four and went back to the kitchen looking for some tea. He noticed that the tray was laid for the guests’ tea but no sign of Ruth. He put the kettle on and went in search of her in the vegetable garden. When he didn’t find her he came back to turn the tea off and heard the police car. He went into the kitchen and met Miss Braithwaite and Mrs C. B. who indicated something to do with Ruth was ‘out of order’. His words.’

  ‘It’s a hell of a long time to be looking for someone in a small vegetable patch from, say, twenty to five to half-past.’

  ‘It’s not a satisfactory story, would you say?’

  Luff was getting into the style of conversing with a colleague rather than just waiting to be prompted, Inspector Bottomley noticed. The lad was learning. If we don’t look out, we shall have a rational, mannerly police force. Then where should we be? ‘Look,’ she said, making up her mind. ‘Its not the strongest case in the world but Bough is clearly the most likely. He’s physically strong, he struck me as capable of having a temper and the tale doesn’t quite stand up. We’ll have another go at him in the morning.’

  ‘Shall I check to see if he’s got any form?’ Luff said on inspiration.

  ‘Right.’ Inspector Bottomley looked at her watch. ‘Doctor’s full report won’t be here till ten. How about the press?’

  ‘Not a dickie bird owing to this place not being on the phone.’ Luff was gleeful.

  ‘Won’t last,’ said Inspector Bottomley dourly. ‘“Murder at the Holy Well” might make the nationals in a quiet season, like what we’ve got. I’ll give you a press release. We don’t want anyone compromising the case by being taken for a ride by clever reporters, do we?’

  Luff supposed she meant that an inexperienced copper could give away too much. But somehow he didn’t resent this slur on his professionalism. She wasn’t out to put him down.

  ‘I think you’d better go back to base and put in the paperwork. Tell them we shall want some more mobile phones and another computer. Can’t have you exhausting yourself with all this handwriting, eh, Sergeant?’

  ‘Are you staying on here, Inspector?’ He was damned if he’d call her ma’am.

  ‘Aye. I’ll stay overnight. And, what’s more, Sergeant, I am going to take the opportunity to immerse myself in the religious life.’

  ‘Brethren, be sober, be vigilant, for thine adversary the Devil goeth about like roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, whom resist, steadfast in the faith.’

  Theodora heard the ancient words with thankfulness. Normally the late evening office of compline was her favourite. The end of the day prefigured the end of life, all tasks accomplished, all passions spent. Today had not been like that. The disfigured features of the dead woman were vivid in her memory. She felt no ability to concentrate herself in prayer to dispel her distress. Why, she wondered, did she find the spectacle of a woman’s death so much more horrifying than a man’s? She had after all seen a fair amount of death in the course of her life. Africa had been full of it. Betterhouse provided its quota of such violence. Perhaps it was because, on the whole, women did not themselves kill quite so often as men. Perhaps too, she admitted to herself, it was the completion of the role of victim so often offered to and taken up by women. They, we, shouldn’t do it; we shouldn’t let ourselves become victims. It’s not fair on our killers. She felt irrational anger at Ruth allowing it to happen. She should have been stronger, quicker, more resourceful, she thought.

  She glanced round the tiny chapel. It was lit only by six candles. Two were on the altar, two each on the pews which faced each other, monkish fashion, across the choir. From time to time the shadows leapt into dragon and serpent shapes as the draught made the flames gutter.

  ‘Before the ending of the day, O Saviour of the world we pray.’ Angus’s voice was steady and resolute in the face of encroaching darkness. In the pew opposite, Theodora could make out Mrs Lemming. She had her eyes fixed on the east window and was making nervous scrabbling sounds with her hands in the service book. Next to her was Mrs Clutton Brock, her head bent, her figure still, but not, Theodora thought, with the stillness of contemplation, rather a sort of rigid tension, like one of her own stretched bowstrings. Below them, from his chair parked at the chancel steps, Canon Beagle’
s strong voice made the responses. At her back. Mr Clutton Brock could be felt rather than heard since he uttered no response other than to sneeze from time to time. Down towards the west door she thought she could make out the bulky figure of Tom Bough standing still and soundless. To his left and behind him, Theodora was surprised to detect Inspector Bottomley. What did the woman want? Was she spying on them?

  ‘Hide me under the shadow of Thy wing,’ Angus said in his pleasant baritone.

  Who had killed Ruth and why? Was it linked with the skull beneath the biretta? Theodora’s attention wandered back to the day’s events. The Inspector had not asked about the incident. Perhaps she had not been told about it. She rather pitied the woman, who would find it difficult to break into a terrain as fenced about as a set of Anglican clerics and their retreatants. But then perhaps Ruth’s death had nothing to do with the place or its people. Most killings had their origins in the past history of the victim and of that she knew, as yet, nothing.

  The light had lessened as the liturgy progressed. Now there was nothing but darkness and the six candles. Angus had asked her to pray for the final blessing. ‘In the circumstances,’ he’d said. He meant but did not say, because it’s a woman who has been killed. Accordingly, as the office drew to its end, Theodora stepped forward. But before she could form her prayer, the door at the west end of the chapel swung open. A gust of air took out one of the candles and a sudden scream from Mrs Lemming broke the silence. All faces turned towards the west end and the sudden inrush of warm air. Theodora made out a figure in a cope standing for a moment framed on the threshold of the chapel door. Then almost at once the shadows of the candles settled and the door swung to. The figure was no more seen. There was a sound of running footsteps as Inspector Bottomley swung at a good pace down the aisle and wrestled with the unfamiliar fastenings on the chapel door.

  ‘It’s Father Bellaire,’ Mrs Lemming hissed, ‘dead these seven years.’