Clerical Errors

by D M Greenwood

  ‘What did Gray suppose he was doing,’ the Dean said, with that sudden concentration on administrative detail which marks those responsible for the proper ordering of cathedrals, ‘receiving St Manicus candles for use on a parish church’s altar? He must have known the source was irregular.’

  Theodora restrained a smile. It was a long time since the Dean had had to balance the books of a poor parish. If Jefferson the fixer had told Paul he had a beekeeping friend who could supply cheap candles she doubted if Paul or many another priest would have hesitated a moment. However, she contented herself with saying, ‘I expect Jefferson had a plausible cover story.’

  ‘He must be mad,’ said the Archdeacon.

  ‘Actually,’ said Theodora, ‘with regard to Wheeler’s death it’s rather difficult to fault him in purely moral terms. It’s just that it’s more usual to wait until court proceedings have taken their course. Perhaps Jefferson feared that they might not deal justly with Wheeler and of course there is no longer a death penalty. That people should be allowed to drug themselves to death, if they want to and if they haven’t the moral stamina to cope with temptation, is less widely held as a view at the present time, but it isn’t an incoherent one.’

  ‘How was it managed? Technically, I mean,’ asked the Dean.

  ‘I think Jefferson relied on the back door of the office being left open for him and his being appraised of a convenient time.’

  ‘And who did that for him?’

  ‘Oh, no doubt about that,’ said Theodora. ‘Rosamund Coldharbour. She and Jefferson knew each other from their common work on the PCC of Narborough St Simeon’s and Rosamund had finally reached the point of wanting Canon Wheeler to get his comeuppance.’

  ‘Good heavens, why?’ said the Archdeacon. ‘Why on earth should Miss Coldharbour want Wheeler dead? After all, you don’t help to kill someone or anyway abet their being killed just because you have betrayed their secrets.’

  The Archdeacon was wrong there, thought Theodora. Given the vagaries of the human heart, you often do wish those you have wronged dead. But before she could frame a reply, Ian broke in. ‘When I saw Rosamund on Sunday after the Show, it was clear that she’d been greatly moved by Paul Gray’s death. The manner of it horrified her. She’d known him, of course, as a curate at Narborough. She trusted him enough to go to him when she was worried about Wheeler’s financial chicanery. Looking back I wonder if she thought those two events were connected, that Wheeler had killed Gray. At the time I just noticed that she showed far more emotion than I’d have thought usual for her.’

  ‘But would she have connived at Jefferson killing Wheeler?’ asked the Dean.

  ‘I don’t think she’d figured out quite what Jefferson might do,’ said Ian. ‘She just agreed to see the back door of the office was left open and left the punishment to Jefferson.’

  ‘Wouldn’t she fear reprisal if Wheeler came to harm?’ asked the Archdeacon.

  ‘I think Rosamund was rather far gone for that.’

  ‘Why?’ pursued the Archdeacon.

  ‘That’s easy,’ Theodora was not too surprised to hear Ian say. ‘Rosamund Coldharbour didn’t care at all about her own fate or about Canon Wheeler’s having had his hand in the till. What she was not prepared to tolerate was a Glaswegian wife of twenty-five years standing. Rosamund, incredibly, loved Charles Wheeler.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Earth Out of Earth is Wonderfully Wrought

  ‘O Lord, open thou our lips,’ sang the resonant operatic tenor of Canon Sylvester, newly returned from Italy, and indeed, thought Ian, it might almost be La Scala itself.

  ‘And our mouths shall show forth thy praise,’ responded Theodora in her pleasant baritone. Seated in her accustomed place at the back of the choir stalls, she allowed her eye to wander up to the high altar and the lancet window of the east end before descending again to the Canons’ stalls and the Bishop’s throne. Thank Heavens it’s all over, she thought happily, and we can resume normal life, that is, Choral Evensong. Then she thought of the Bishop who had lost a son and who could not bear it.

  ‘O Lord, make haste to help us,’ the choir answered Canon Sylvester’s petition. Ian, a row in front of Theodora, thought of Williams and Mrs Thrigg and the silly collection of half-wits who had come to hate the ordinariness of virtue, the sober and godly life of the Anglican collects, and wanted excitements of a darker kind. What a lot of help we all of us do seem to need.

  Julia, sitting between Ian and Dhani, unused to the form of the service, allowed her attention to wander in and out of the words and caught up at ‘For there is none other which fighteth for us, but only thou, O Lord.’ She thought of her innocent cousin who had become tangled in a net of evil from which he had not the courage to cut himself free; she thought of Markham, spoilt and contorted in some way now no longer reachable. She thought, I had really better go back to Australia and learn to be a cook or a farm hand. England was too complicated for her.

  The petitions ended, the readings and psalms concluded, the splendid spell of the liturgy was almost wound up. The organ ceased. Slowly the Bishop ambled up to the pulpit, following his verger with that peculiar Anglican gait, as though there were all the time in the world, as though the world were owned by and would therefore wait for, the Anglican clergy.

  ‘Our modern derangement,’ Julia heard the Bishop say, ‘is the same now as in the time of our blessed founder, St Manicus. The madness to which I refer is fear. You will recall our Lord’s repeated injunction, often uttered before a miracle of healing, “Fear not”.’

  Ian thought of Wheeler, who must have spent much of his life being terrified and who sublimated it by bullying. He thought of the Archdeacon’s fear which had prevented him from airing his suspicions about the Cathedral and Miss Coldharbour’s fear of the knowledge which she had ferreted out. He thought of his own fear of the Bishop which had prevented him speaking out and perhaps saving the Bishop’s son.

  ‘Fear and power,’ said the Bishop, ‘are bound together in our lives. We fear to die, we fear to suffer in our egos more, almost, than in our bodies. Because of that, we are afraid to live. To keep such fears at bay, we seek to make others fear us. It is the only power we have. And yet, my brethren, I beseech you to consider that the ikon of true power is the child. Not, that is, the egotistical child of the personality, which leads us back again to demands to be fed with being feared, but the Christ child whose marks are firstly innocence and secondly vulnerability.’

  Dhani scrutinised the Bishop’s figure. He looked tense round the shoulders, probably suffered from migraine as well as arthritis. He would benefit from a change of diet and a course of body work, thought Dhani compassionately. He could help him. But of course, the Bishop would never dream of either detecting his own illnesses or seeking help from him. Marks of sorrow, marks of woe. Dhani meditated on his own melancholy pleasure at the aptness of the quotation.

  ‘If we are willing,’ the Bishop was saying, ‘if we can find the strength to suffer, to make ourselves vulnerable even to the wounds which others can inflict on our pride; if we can do this innocently, that is, without hatred or resentment, then we have nothing to fear from fear.’

  Theodora thought of Wheeler, whom she needed to pity and forgive. She thought of Jefferson, whose virtue had calloused and grown monstrous. Her eye wandered to the memorial tablet of the seventeenth- century baronet: Vivit post funera virtus, Goodness survives death. She prayed, let not evil do the same. Perhaps she had better get in touch with Mrs Wheeler and also see if anything could be done for Miss Coldharbour.

  ‘If we can only draw in,’ the Bishop was concluding, ‘almost with our breath, almost with our bread, the spirit of truthfulness which comes from prayer and reflection; the spirit of modesty which must come from any appraisal of the self, and the spirit of generosity which can be ours when we contemplate our blessings, then we can surely banish fear and walk as children of light. And now to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, be ascr
ibed as is most justly due, all might, majesty, dominion and power.’