Clerical Errors

by D M Greenwood

  She kept recalling the scene in the kitchen. McGee had summoned the Dean, but it had been Lord Cumbermound who had led the party down the back stairs. Though he had lurched into the kitchen like a drunken huntsman, he had known what to do. With the authority of a man used to calling hounds to heel he’d taken the arm from the dog, wrapped it in a towel and set it on the draining board. Then he’d sent McGee to phone the police and the Dean back upstairs to inform the Bishop, who had not joined the kitchen party. Wheeler was paler, tenser than she had seen him before, his hands trembling. Cumbermound had sent him for brandy and glasses. When these had been procured, the Earl, ignoring Wheeler, had poured out two measures, one enormous one for himself, and a smaller one for Julia. When she had shaken her head, he’d taken her hand firmly in his and said peremptorily, ‘Drink it. It’s going to be a long session.’

  Choking, Julia had obeyed.

  She could not stop herself recalling the moment when she had realised what it was the dog had had in its mouth. She wondered if she would ever free herself from the memory. She recalled Ian’s advice and whenever the picture came before her eyes, she tried breathing it out. She realised that, as she did this, she was almost groaning with her effort to release the horror locked within her. Gradually, she began to feel calmer. She wondered why Caretaker’s advice appeared to work and longed to ask him. As if in answer to her wish she heard a heavy, masculine tread on the uncarpeted stairs outside her door. Slightly taken aback, she called ‘Come in’ to the rather hesitant knock.

  Ian edged into the room as though not quite knowing what to expect. He looked down at her with concern.

  ‘Hello, I’m sorry to intrude. I, that is, we, Theodora and I, wondered how you were.’

  Julia smiled with gratitude. ‘Much better for seeing you,’ she said cordially. ‘It was kind of you to come.’ She pulled herself into a sitting position.

  Ian grinned. ‘Theodora really sent me to ask if you would care to come to supper this evening on the wherry with Dhani, if you feel up to it? I think she feels you shouldn’t be let too much alone but she can’t get away herself. Pressures at the office.’

  ‘She shouldn’t be in the office on Saturday.’

  ‘Canon Wheeler required his staff to be in, “in the circumstances”, as he put it. Actually he wanted someone to give some orders to and to deal with the press for him. For once he seems to be at a loss for words. I’m playing hooky for an hour.’

  Julia found herself suddenly weeping. Kindness always moved her more than anything else. Ian looked unhappy but did not disengage his attention from her.

  ‘Try breathing it out,’ he said after a moment.

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ said Julia half way between exasperation and laughter. However, she ceased to weep. ‘Tell me the news,’ she said, pulling herself together.

  ‘Well,’ said Ian, ‘I was rather hoping you might do that for me. Rumour, as you may guess, is rife. It ranges from the Dean’s having been arrested for murdering Paul Gray to the Bishop’s having hired Lord Cumbermound’s beagles to track down the corpse.’

  Julia told him as much as she knew. Hesitantly she mentioned the notes in Crockford. She noticed Ian flush as she retailed the little she knew of their contents.

  ‘Was it in Charles’s handwriting?’

  ‘Yes. Unusually clear too,’ Julia added.

  Ian walked to the open window and looked up at the hills, with their barracks, prison and asylum perched aloft. ‘Charles’s drug,’ he said slowly, ‘is power. When he’s in the presence of political or worldly ecclesiastical power, I’ve noticed there’s an almost physiological reaction in him. He gets physically excited. Ambition oozes from him like sweat. His place obsesses him. And until he gets real power he’ll make do with deference – subservience even. And he’s willing to punish, if need be, to get it. It begins to look as if his obsession has led him down evil paths.’

  Julia took note of Ian’s tone as well as his words. He may well be right on the evidence she thought, but he’s rather too glad he’s got something on Wheeler at last. She felt the strength of Ian’s contempt for Wheeler. It was wrapped in theatricality but there was real bitterness beneath. Was it, she wondered, justified? She recalled Theodora’s remarks about Ian’s not being regarded as ‘reliable’ by the clergy. She remembered, too, Canon Wheeler’s unexpected appearance at Ian’s attic office when he had perhaps expected to find it empty. Was that how Wheeler gathered his information for his nasty notes?

  ‘Where do you think he got his information on Paul’ – Julia corrected herself – ‘Mr Gray from?’

  ‘The cv stuff he could get from Crockford. It’s a sort of ecclesiastical Who’s Who.’

  ‘And the other stuff, the “certainly” and “probably”?’

  Ian turned to her kindly. ‘It doesn’t amount to more than gossip, you know. There was some sort of a row in Gray’s first curacy at Narborough. He was a curate during an interregnum, so he was left very much to his own devices. He ran a youth club with a man called Jefferson, who had been a regular soldier. He was invalided out and qualified with the local authority as a youth worker. Jefferson approached the parish and, since he came with a reference from his regiment’s padre, they were glad to use him. But he had a rather military approach to the work and he did run some rather tough courses for some of the boys, so one of the parents complained. But there was no suggestion that Gray had been involved in anything improper and Jefferson continued to be involved in youth work. People with his sort of skills willing to give a bit of time to the Church are in rather short supply.’

  ‘What would Paul’s relations have been with Canon Wheeler?’ Julia inquired. She really had very little idea of how the diocesan senior clergy connected with the parish priests. ‘Would Canon Wheeler have been Paul’s boss?’

  Ian snorted. ‘In no sense, though some diocesan clergy tend to treat parochial clergy as though they were their inferiors. And many parochial clergy react by resenting and despising the chapter. All authority, both of chapter and parish clergy derives from the bishop. In law and theology the priest in the parish represents the bishop to the people. Priests take an oath of allegiance to the bishop at their induction into their livings and at set times, often on Maundy Thursday, they will renew their vows. I suppose the link between chapter and parish is really administratively through the archdeacon. He’s a sort of diocesan works manager responsible to the bishop for the smooth running of the parish priests. The chapter are supposed to run the cathedral not the diocese. Nevertheless because they are supposed to be men of wide experience and outstanding capability the bishop may from time to time give them particular tasks to do in connection with parish priests. This may have happened with Wheeler and Gray. Wheeler may have been “given a charge” as the phrase goes, by the Bishop to keep an eye on Paul when he went to his new parish at Markham cum Cumbermound.’

  ‘I see,’ said Julia not being too sure whether she did or not. ‘I wish I’d had time to read what Canon Wheeler had written on Jefferson all the same. The other piece of paper had the name J. Williams on it. Do you know anything about him?’

  ‘Head Verger. Welsh,’ said Ian unforgivingly.

  ‘I wonder what he’d written on him.’

  ‘Anything would be possible of that creepy little beggar.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘Frankly,’ said Ian reluctantly, ‘I have to admit I’ve never caught him out in anything except of course of being Welsh. But I’d believe anything of him.’

  Julia laughed. ‘You’re absolutely irrational. I expect he’s a perfectly nice man. You said yourself that figuring on Canon Wheeler’s hit list doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve done anything disreputable.’

  ‘Someone killed Paul Gray,’ said Ian sombrely. ‘And it’s beginning to look as though he was killed in the environs of the Cathedral. Putting heads in fonts and corpses in compost heaps suggests a fair amount of familiarity with the building.’

  ‘Yo
u mean a verger would have that sort of familiarity?’

  ‘Yes. But of course so would many other people. As well as access. The keys to the Cathedral were widely distributed as far as I can make out.’ Then Ian realised that wasn’t in fact true. There was only one certain way into the Cathedral and that was by the Bishop’s door if the Bishop forgot to lock it after him.

  ‘What on earth could be the reason for Williams killing Paul?’

  ‘Ah, now there you have me. But give me a bit of time and I’m sure I can find some cogent motive to pin on him.’

  ‘And what about G. Markham. I saw his name too. Who’s he?’

  Ian frowned and turned once more to the window. Finally, with every sign of reluctance, he said, ‘He’s Lord Cumbermound’s youngest son. He’s no good. I should have thought it would be the easiest thing in the world to write a file on him. I could do one myself. I don’t know how Wheeler knows him except that Charles has a cottage on the Cumbermound estate so perhaps he’s come across him that way. Markham’s certainly not a churchman, though of course the Cumbermounds are the leading lay family in the county. Presumably you didn’t have time to see what Wheeler had got on him – if anything?’

  Julia shook her head, and this time she was not smiling. She said, ‘What do you suppose Canon Wheeler means to do with all those “probables” and “certains”?’

  ‘I think he already exacts a fair degree of pleasure from simply being able to make people jump whenever he calls them up.’

  ‘Money?’

  ‘Oh, nothing so crude, though Charles certainly knows its value and gets through a fair amount. No. You remember how Rosamund Coldharbour set you up for him in the matter of typing that sermon?’ Julia nodded unhappily. ‘I think it’s psychological satisfactions of that sort which he’s after and which Rosamund puts in his path. Just letting people know that, if he chooses, he could make life very uncomfortable for them, so they’d better lick his boots hadn’t they?’

  ‘But it’s perverted,’ Julia protested.

  ‘Only mildly so, in the Church’s terms at least.’

  Julia contemplated the landscape opened up to her by Ian’s remarks. She felt a sort of desolation sweep over her, together with something like pity for Wheeler. She remembered Theodora’s remarks to her in a similar vein. ‘How appalling,’ she murmured.

  ‘Deathly for the victim, certainly,’ said Ian with feeling.

  ‘I meant for him, for Wheeler,’ said Julia meekly. ‘To reduce all human relationships to games for that sort of fulfilment is terrible.’

  ‘Certain professions create the conditions in which seeking those sorts of pleasure is almost legitimate. Teaching is one such, the Church another. Certainly Charles Wheeler isn’t the first priest in the Church to get his kicks like that.’

  ‘Where does Wheeler come from?’ said Julia suddenly. ‘Why isn’t he married? I thought Church of England clergy had to be.’

  Ian smiled. ‘They don’t actually have to marry. Celibacy is perfectly acceptable, although rare. As for his previous career, I don’t know any more than is in the book you saw, Crockford. I think he’s Scottish by extraction, though you’d hardly know it from his accent. I’ve never heard of a wife mentioned in connection with him. I’m pretty certain he hasn’t been married.’

  ‘Or divorced?’

  ‘Highly unlikely. The Bishop takes an old–fashioned high church view on divorced clergy. He won’t induct them to a living if he can help it and he certainly wouldn’t put a divorced priest into a canonry.’

  Julia suddenly found herself near to tears again. She longed to ask him more about Paul Gray but could not quite frame the question she wanted to ask. Instead, she said, ‘And the fourth sheet of paper? What’s Canon Wheeler got on you?’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Ian and laughed so genuinely that Julia was reassured. ‘I could always ask Canon Wheeler to hear my confession under the seal,’ he said wickedly. ‘That’d stymie the bastard.’

  Julia stayed the rest of the day in bed, got up and bathed at six, dressed carefully in a green shirt and black jeans, and then walked slowly down to the town. Her fever appeared to have receded, leaving her feeling light and free. She debated whether to reach the wherry by going through the Cathedral grounds and over the footbridge – the prettier way – or whether to use over the traffic bridge in front of the market square. Finding she could not bear to face the police who might still be in the environs of Canons’ Court, she decided on the traffic bridge. She bought wine at the off licence on the corner of Market Street and plunged between the bridge’s traffic, locked solid on a Saturday evening. With relief, she turned left down the tow–path towards the Amy Roy. The rain had ceased and behind the wherry’s mast was a splendid yellow and grey sky. The Dutch motor yacht had gone again, leaving the Amy Roy to form a nineteenth–century watercolour on her own.

  Julia climbed on board without hesitation, sure of her welcome, relieved and delighted to be with people whom she trusted. She made her way aft to the companionway and, hesitating a moment, called, ‘Hello.’

  Dhani’s not quite English voice answered her. ‘Down here. Come down.’

  She descended the steep mahogany steps into the galley, beyond which lay the living space in the converted hold. Dhani smiled at her and his whole face illuminated when he did so.

  ‘You’re most welcome,’ he said. ‘You’re the first. How are you feeling after your ordeal?’

  ‘Fairly recovered, thanks,’ she assured him.

  He regarded her. ‘It will leave its mark, I think. Are you dealing with it?’

  ‘Ian keeps telling me to breathe it out,’ said Julia half smiling.

  ‘Sound advice,’ said Dhani. ‘You must not suppress it. You must allow all the horror of the picture to visit you as often as it will. Do not thrust it aside. On the other hand, do not dramatise or exaggerate it. Just let it stay with you and then breathe it away.’

  He knows. Julia thought. He’s experienced horrors and he’s dealt successfully with them. He spoke with authority and she trusted him. She could see why Ian did too.

  She came further into the kitchen. ‘Can I do anything to help,’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Chop some bread up, could you, and take it through? They won’t be long now, I think. Thank you for the wine.’

  While she was chopping she said, ‘You’ve known Ian a long time?’

  ‘I came into the first form of his boarding school. He was extremely kind to me. If he hadn’t been, I should have made many more mistakes than I did and been more unhappy than I was. He had, in some respects, a maturity beyond his years. Later, I returned to Thailand and he came out and stayed with us. He enjoyed it, I think. He liked my mother; he lost his many years ago. We are rich – diplomats. It was Ian who persuaded my father to let me go on to Cambridge, which I did a year after Ian. Do you know Cambridge at all?’

  Julia considered.’ In one respect, yes, I know it. I lived there for eighteen months with someone I thought I loved, indeed who I did, do, no, did love.’

  Dhani looked at her quizzically, ‘It doesn’t die, does it? Only changes.’

  ‘In my case,’ said Julia thoughtfully, ‘it changed to hate.’

  ‘That’s bad,’ said Dhani.

  ‘Yes, it is. I can see it is. But I can’t quite see how to deal with it yet. And don’t tell me to breathe it out. I haven’t finished with it.’

  Dhani smiled, ‘I wasn’t going to suggest anything so radical. As you say, you are clearly not yet ready for that solution.’

  ‘Dhani, why does breathing it out work?’

  ‘Don’t you say in one of your Christian writings, “The Lord is the breath of life”?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Julia. ‘I’m not a Christian and I’m not educated.’

  ‘If you are Western European by descent then you are Christian,’ said Dhani authoritatively. ‘And you appear to underestimate the degree of your education, if I may say so.’

  ‘But Christ
ianity doesn’t mean anything to me. It just seems to be a sort of club for the clergy.’

  ‘You speak of Anglicanism, perhaps, not Christianity.’

  ‘I suppose so. But even as a club, Anglicanism doesn’t seem to be terribly’ – she hesitated – ‘effective. I mean they can’t even be kind to each other let alone other people.’

  ‘What about Theodora and Ian?’

  ‘They aren’t clergy.’

  ‘Theodora is, I think. And I’m sure she would say that Anglicanism isn’t just the clergy.’

  ‘Well,’ said Julia, ‘she’s different. And yes, I think that what the clergy are, Anglicanism is. They seem to set the tone.’

  ‘What about the Dean, of whom I have heard both Theodora and Ian speak with affection?’

  ‘Well, yes. But in some respects he seems to be left over from a previous age. I feel when he’s gone they won’t be able to replace him. Canon Wheeler is the modern type.’

  ‘That one sounds to me like an archetypal priest,’ said Dhani. ‘There’s nothing new about proud prelates with suspect backgrounds.’

  There was the sound of confident feet descending the companionway and Theodora entered the galley. She had brought an offering of apples and bananas. ‘Good evening, Dhani. Good evening, Julia. How are you after your ordeal?’

  ‘Theodora,’ said Julia bravely, ‘is breathing it out in Dhani’s system the same as praying in yours?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Theodora finding no difficulty at all in launching straight into theological discussion whilst arranging her fruit in a bowl. ‘There are, of course, certain differences in credal formulation between the two traditions. I mean, the way in which Christians and Buddhists would describe what they do in terms of their own systems might differ. But at the level of experience, essentially the foothills of prayer are a matter of modifying our consciousness in certain ways and breathing is a way of purifying the affections. “Make clean our hearts within us”, you remember.’